30. Circumnavigating Borneo

I had assumed, seeing as Borneo looked quite small when viewed on a map, that the coach trip to Semporna (the staging town for Sipadan) wouldn’t take too long. It seemed that I underestimated the travel time for literally every journey I had been on that trip. It ended up taking over 10 hours!

After an early start, taxi ride, and short wait at the bus depot we got underway. The road left KK, where it quickly climbed and twisted its way up into the hills. We were driven past glorious tropical valleys, cliffs, and eventually mount Kinablu itself came into view. We went so high that we were almost driving past the summit! I suppose it was a consolation prize since we weren’t able to climb it properly. It was very spectacular, and I vainly attempted to capture the magnificence on my phone’s camera before the road left the mountains and wound its way down to flatter terrain.

I was sat next to a young family, 3 small children and their mother. The road was very winding, and this soon got the better of them and they promptly began filling numerous carrier bags with vomit. I made use of loud music and staring steadfastly at the awesome views to block out their distress.

Around half way there, (a point I wrongly assumed was just outside Semporna) our young driver stopped and let some of his friends on. As we pulled away they put on a Malaysian music channel, for everyone to enjoy. The all then gathered around the driver seat laughing, drinking and chatting ready for a night out.

Spurred on by his chums, the driver drove a lot faster. I had been watching with some detached interest the malay-pop on the coach tv, but the drivers speed caused renewed havoc with the tummies of my travel-sick neighbours, so was again forced to retreat behind my own noise excluding headphones.
I was actually glad the driver was in a hurry. We were meant to be heading out to Sipadan on a boat at 7.45 the following morning, and so I wanted to go to the dive shop in Semporna and get everything sorted out that day. However the afternoon was rapidly drawing on and it was making me pretty anxious. Especially since I thought we were nearly there a few hours ago.
It was about 6pm by the time we finally rolled into town. I really wanted to get going, and also the vomit bags from the young family next to me had really started to stink - so Pat and I pretty much sprinted off the coach.

It seemed to take an eternity to find where the dive shop was. Once we found it we discovered, perhaps unsurprisingly, that it was closed. I was pretty gutted. At this point part of me was resigned to having lost the booking. In spite of that we resolved to return at the crack of dawn tomorrow and sort something out.

We made our way to a nearby hostel and attempted to get some sleep.

29. Kota Kinabalu

In the couple of days Pat & I spent in the city we explored it quite thoroughly. We visited a number of markets and covered a lot of ground.

It is a very nice place to be. I found it to be surprisingly modern and westernised, especially when compared to the most recent big city I had been in: Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. I had half expected that since this was Borneo that we would be landing in the middle of a jungle and need to stay in bamboo huts and barter with the tribal locals for bowls of rice or something. Not so. The roads and pavements were clean and well maintained; the traffic was ordered and sedate; the buildings were all new; and the meals we had were typically in modern, relatively fancy places.

We must have visited in "market season"

For a little while my inner geek had been a little restless, because I knew that “the hobbit” had just come out. KK looked equipped to meet my western needs, so I decided to try and watch it here. With a little research I managed to find a cinema that was showing it: inside a large mall not too far from Lucy’s.
We tracked this mall down and went in. The place twisted and wound around like a maze. I couldn’t quite make sense of where anything was, and there were no signs so this made finding the cinema quite difficult. After some time, and worrying that we would miss the start of the film we got to the floor where we thought the screens were. Unfortunately we still couldn’t see where to go. We ended up hurrying through lengthy corridors lined with crowded karaoke booths, eventually finding the entrance to the cinema just in the nick of time.

I enjoyed the film, despite the dismal picture quality (it almost looked like a stolen camera copy) and everyone in the audience chatting and messing about with their phones.
I remember thinking to myself during the film: What a jump the things I was doing in KK were from the rustic isolation of Otres beach. It oddly made me feel a little ashamed that I wasn’t doing travelling properly, since I was doing something that I would just do normally back home.

I needn’t have worried too much, we were soon to be launched into a something entirely different and unexpected.

28. Lucy's Homestay

Getting to Kota Kinabalu (or “KK” as the cool kids knew it) involved going through 2 border controls, which confused me immensely. Initially you arrive in Malaysia and they check your passport. Fine, that made sense. Then there was an internal flight to get to Sabah in Borneo which is where we wanted to go to, but still part of the same country. But once we were there everyone went through border security again! Well, at least I got another passport stamp.

We were staying in a hostel called lucy’s homestay. It was a little late when we arrived there, and had to navigate the intimidating locked metal gate and doors to get in. The eponymous Lucy herself dealt with everything in the hostel, including our late check in. She immediately made me feel at home, having quite a motherly manner. I almost felt I was staying round her house. I supposed in some ways we were.

The following morning after getting up Lucy, ensured that we knew where everything was for breakfast with typical brusque efficiency. I found a welcome comfort from England: marmite! I hadn’t had marmite in months so fondly guzzled some of that on toast and good old cuppa for breakfast. After the weeks of rustic beach life this almost felt like home.

We only had a couple of days in KK. Sabah boasts some incredible scenery and wildlife, one “must see” attraction is mount Kinabalu. We asked Lucy about some options of climbing it. However it looked like it would be a full day excursion and would not be a trivial activity. It was also fairly expensive. So we reluctantly decided against that. Instead bought 2 coach tickets to Semporna (where we needed to get to for Sipadan) from Lucy, and take it relatively easy for a couple of days.

27. Farewell Cambodia

So we left Otres beach with a heavy heart. However I had to admit I was also very excited. As Pat kept repeating: We’re going to fucking Borneo! It seemed a little surreal. So we took the long drive back to phnom penh, stayed one night in the place we were at before before, and in the morning took a tuk tuk to the airport.


I was aware that we were 2 weeks over our permitted stay of 1 month. At the airport I was careful to make all the staff I interacted with aware of this. Oddly, my grave admission was universally met with a shrug and being waved on.

So we got to the check in desk, and  I once again said that I had overstayed by visa and probably needed to pay a fine. This yet again seemed to fall on uninterested ears. The surly looking gentleman at the desk scrutinised my documents at length. As he checked them, though, a look of horror spread across his face, like he had just seen something never before encountered in his lifetime. He hurriedly grabbed Pat’s passport as well as if to confirm something. I was starting to worry that I had committed some unspeakable crime in the country without realising.


“Over there! Over there” He said, handing us both a slip of paper. He was pointing to a desk I had passed already (and announced that I wanted to pay a fine at). Anyway we went to the desk and the slightly taller surly looking gentleman scrutinised the slip of paper we had been given, and then looked at our documents for a while. A look of horror spread across his face, like he had never seen such a thing before either.

He wrote $30 down on a bit of paper and held it out to us. That was actually quite a lot of money relatively speaking, but not to me so I was a relieved and paid the man. Well it was either that or make a run for it and become a fugitive over thirty dollars.

And with that, we left Cambodia behind us, destined for Malaysia.

26. jul mouy

A couple of days after new year's came our time to leave. A couple of days before me Mikel and the gang headed off. They said that we should get in touch when we are in Vietnam. I promised that I would, since I intended to head through Vietnam.

Given that Pat and me are very awesome the owner decided to throw us a surprise Cambodian style leaving party.
The day before we had to check out and move on we were out busy doing the usual activity of not too much. We returned to find that everyone all of the regulars were in the common area, along with all of the staff. It was quite humbling.
Mr Lim himself donned his chefs hat and manned a barbeque, cooking up various Cambodian delicacies for everyone to sample.  A little annoyingly though, since I didn't know it was going to happen I had already had eaten a massive pizza over the road shortly before! So I must have come across as a little rude since I didn’t eat as much as I would have liked to.

The other lovely thing was that we had all the beer we could drink. Perhaps a little too much so. When Mr Lim shouted “jul mouy!” (which is Cambodian for "cheers") (and which happened about every 5 minutes) everyone had to down their drinks, which would then be replaced immediately.

Selfie! Pat, Me and Mr. Lim

Things got late and loud. Some guests I hadn’t seen before came out to complain that we were being too noisy.
At this Mr Lim the owner took great offense and began angrily shouting at them:

"This is a party for my friends, who do you think you are?"

As the man vainly attempted to reason with him. Mr Lim started taking off his shirt and began squaring up to him for a fight. The man backed down and hurried off to their room.

I couldn't help feeling bad for him, but at the same time very honoured.

25. New year on the beach

A few days later came the new year’s eve celebrations.

The festivities started, as most days did, at the guest house with the regulars. However there was a new group of newcomers that had recently arrived at Lim hour. They were called Mikel, Sunny and Hanna. They had come from Vietnam where they were working, and were taking a few days holiday in Cambodia to celebrate new year’s eve. They had befriended us all and settled in quickly, as most people did.
Mikel wasn’t messing around, and started off in the afternoon with neat vodka. The rest of us joined in with some beers not long after.

The venue for the countdown was Richies bar. Again, not that dissimilar from most other days. So before long we made our way there. We proceeded to enjoy the night, drinking copiously and setting off fireworks.

By about 11, Mikel had passed out in a sunbed on the beach. Being the nice chaps that we were, we didn’t want him to miss the revelry and so attempted to wake him. However no amount of yelling in his face or shaking seemed to do the trick. There was nothing for it but to attempt to get him home. Me and Pat attempted to deadlift him home. However despite only being a 5 minute walk we realised this would be a bit of a struggle. So we made it as far as the road, and then unceremoniously dumped him in a tuk tuk, I rode along with him. The driver wanted several dollars payment. I paid him despite the fact that I was trying to help a friend, despite the fact that it was new year and despite the fact he had only driven for little over 10 seconds! The swine.

So Mikel was unceremoniously dumped on the ground, and the tuk tuk took off. Then came the difficult challenge of actually getting him to his room. It took a while but eventually I half carried, half dragged him there. Once that was done I ran back to the bar just in time for the new year countdown, and a kiss from one of the girls. I guess it wasn't all bad.

After more drinking and dancing I staggered home and plopped myself in an armchair outside the room for a bit. Thomas soon appeared looking pretty wired and joined me. We both sat outside babbling about nonsense. He moved from the chair to an inflatable tyre. After a very long time we ran out of the drink. There is a hint of dawn in the air as I went off to bed.

The next day I woke up and found Thomas fast asleep in the exact same place that I left him.

24. Christmas Cambodi-dinner

Despite the sedate nature of this (so called) travelling me and Pat were doing Christmas came around worryingly fast, and arrived with a bang.
The entire place was awoken absurdly early at about 11 am by “holiday in cambodia” by the dead kennedys being played at full volume from reception. I had no doubt it was Thomas.

A while back I had booked Christmas dinner at Richie’s. They had promised that they were going to fly in turkeys and sausages in from a butcher in the UK and it did not disappoint. We had prawn cocktail starter, turkey roasts stuffing & pigs in blankets and sherry trifle. To top it off all Booze was included.

The feast

By the evening I was nicely sloshed. A group of us got some inflatables and went to sit in the sea. Pat used his waterproof diving bag as a chiller for some beers using ice kindly provided by Richies. The rest of the night’s events are a boozy blur. I do remember that I skyped my mum from the beach and had to admit to her that whilst I was sad I could not be with the family - I wasn't sad about anything else!

The day after Christmas I was not feeling too hungover (which worried me a little) so decided that I would do something a little different and visit Sihanoukville to go to the gym. Mr Lim kindly provided me with the address of a couple of gyms, so I stepped out onto the dirt road to employ the services of a tuktuk (there were always a couple hovering about here and there).

After getting to town I was driven to a random part of the suburbs, seemingly where the first gym was located. This so called gym was essentially a warehouse with a running machine in it and a couple of dumbbells. I decided to try another one. The second one was far nicer. It seemed to be primarily a Khmer boxing place, but had plenty of gym equipment and was set in a pleasant tropical garden. The tuk tuk driver waited for us to finish and drove us back.



I ended up going to that gym a couple of times in the run up to new year. On the second visit just as with the first my driver said he would wait. No problem I told him. I went and got changed. When I emerged I found that the gym was actually extremely busy. I had a go on the machines when they became free. After that I grabbed some dumbbells. It was very crowded to the point that there wasn’t anywhere obvious to stand. I searched around and eventually noticed a spot at one of the edges of the gym area. When I got to it, however, I found that my driver was sat there on a low wall looking in at everyone! The space was directly in front of him so I had no choice but to finish my exercise there. He didn’t seem like he wanted to move, so I carried on regardless, essentially doing my exercises as an odd performance for his benefit! It was quite bizarre and somewhat embarrassing.